Change to file formats of Meteosat meteorological products

EUMETSAT disseminates Meteosat meteorological products in LRIT format via EUMETCast.

The EUMETCast LRIT format is not compliant with the WMO standard for GTS distribution, and has a known limitation on product sizes.

In order to address these two issues, we plan to replace the LRIT format by a WMO compliant format in October 2022.

To facilitate user transition to the new format, a period of parallel dissemination is foreseen and test data are provided.

Current planned timeline:

• 19 July–20 October 2022: Parallel dissemination on EUMETCast of the Meteosat meteorological products in the new WMO compliant format. Note: the parallel stream will be from Meteosat-11 only.
  The parallel stream will be distributed on EUMETCast Europe:
  Channel: E1B-MSG-PAR
  Multicast address: 224.223.222.3
  PID: 500
  Users currently subscribed to Meteosat 0° Meteorological products will receive the parallel stream automatically.
• 20 October 2022: Operational switch to the WMO compliant format. Meteosat meteorological products will no longer be available in the old LRIT format.

Test data, including three days of data in the old format and in the new format, are made available on our SFTP server:

https://sftp.eumetsat.int/public/folder/UsCVknVOOkSyCdgpMimJNQ/User-Materials/Test-Data/Change_to_MPEF_File_Formats/

The dates available are:

• Met-8: 16, 17, and 18 September 2021
• Met-10: 21, 22, and 23 September 2021
• Met-11: 25, 26, and 27 September 2021

With this change, the files distributed via EUMETCast will have the same format as those distributed via the GTS.

The Meteosat Meteorological Product Format Description explains how to read and process the products in the new format.

Note:

• There will be no change in the scientific contents of the products.
• This format change will not affect the products archived in our Data Centre.

The software changes required for the replacement of the EUMETCast LRIT format involve another small change, which only affects the timestamp of the AMV products distributed on the GTS. The product time reported in the header of each Meteosat meteorological product is identical to the timestamp in the product file name, with the exception of the AMV product for which there currently is a 15-minute difference (5 minutes for the RSS AMV) between the product time and the timestamp in the file name. So the change will consist in aligning the timestamp in the file name to the product time. The product time will remain unchanged.

Currently, the AMV products distributed on the GTS have the following timestamps.

This will become:

This change will be implemented operationally on 20 October 2022. It only affects the AMV products distributed on the GTS; the AMV products distributed on EUMETCast already have a timestamp that is identical to the product time in the product header.

For more information, contact our User Service Helpdesk.